Miracle Whip Lays It On Thick With Video Contest

Some things just refuse to be updated: The NBC peacock, highball glasses, the Dudley Moore Arthur. Also, the "food product" known as Miracle Whip. But that's not stopping parent company Kraft from trying to make this long-time brand relevant and cool again.

"Do You Take This Condiment?" asked the full-page ad placed by Kraft Foods Global Inc. in the country's largest newspapers this week. The ad went on to read:

Dearly Beloved:

We are gathered here to tell you that you could win $25,000 towards your wedding (congratulations!) or your divorce (congratulations!).

All you have to do is create video with your significant other that impresses our judges and tells how Miracle Whip impacts your relationship. We know we're not for everyone, so sometimes we can start trouble. Or become the catalyst of a storybook romance. Then upload your video to miraclewhip.com to begin the judge impressing.

Disclaimer: I grew up in a Miracle Whip household. Worse, we tended to refer to it as "mayonnaise." Once someone brought Hellman's home and the jig was up, we began parsing what exactly was so miraculous about Miracle Whip. This is exactly the sort of debate good Catholics loved 40 years ago, when the threshold for real miracles was a bit higher.

But it turns out that Kraft is looking for a little miracle of its own. Big brands in its portfolio like Macaroni & Cheese and its Athenos hummus line have been on the decline -- and Kraft told The Wall Street Journal that Miracle Whip sales have been down 5 percent a year for many years, with most recent annual retail sales of more than $260 million, excluding sales at Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which doesn't supply such data.

A feisty Greek grandmother hawking the Athenos line has reportedly become a YouTube sensation and is credited with pushing sales higher. The Miracle Whip video contest is part of the same strategy to arrest the sales erosion and use social media (newsprint ads notwithstanding) to engage customers and get them talking and making videos about a brand they love (or loathe).

As promotions go, I don't think a video contest is particularly original or compelling. But I'll give Kraft credit here: This sure beats the heck out of a bake-off where the dish has to use Miracle Whip as an ingredient, or a chatroom that invites the MW faithful to reminisce about their favorite ways to inflict that gelatinous goop on unsuspecting guests ("So spreadable!" "So airy and light.")
No, none of that. Instead, both fans and detractors will have a shot at 25 G's to to pay for a wedding -- or a divorce. The WSJ quotes a Kraft exec as saying "We've seen Twitter posts about how people have broken up over this." Of course they have.

There's only about four weeks left to shoot your condiment video -- the Miracle Whip contest ends Aug. 23. Me, I'll probably wait for the Heinz 57 testimonial campaign or maybe something more upscale like the Grey Poupon "Like" fest. It's high time those brands got a refresh, too.

Anyway, this may be a new high (or low) in shameless marketing. The suggestion idea that a product can the crucial link or cause of breakup in a relationship magnifies its importance far beyond mere food -- and it is not even a food product on its own but a "dressing." What would that say about the nature of a relationship?

I'm thinking it's more a low. Every brand needs to bank on a "more than just a product" consumer insight, yes, but I'm not so sure this is the way to do it.

I'd say they could've done the brand more good by getting the Viral Factory to make them a viral video. Would have saved them the ad spend too.

The idea of these videos for Miracle Whip will be, by no mistake, driven by the $25,000 only. What is there for Kraft left in term of sales when the video campaign is over? Not much, I dare to sell. People may forget all about Miracle Whip sooner than what is even expected and sales may go back to dropping 5%, or how much was it?

Incidentally, this contest is strongly reminiscent of what the Koreans did with American POWs.

According to Robert Cialdini's account in his seminal work on social psychology, "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion," the Koreans would hold essay contests for the American POWs, in which the POWs were invited to write a comparison essay on Korean way of life versus American way of life.

The prizes were always very modest... a bag of rice, for instance.

The POWs would enter the contest, most writing in favor of the Korean way of life, even though they did not believe it, because they figured that only a pro-Korean/anti-American essay would win the contest.

Once in a great while, however, an anti-Korean/pro-American essay would win.

Here was the upshot of all this:

Cialdini offers this account in his chapter on consistency, explaining that if you publicly say a belief or write a belief, you are that much more likely to believe it, stand by it, and act accordingly -- even if you did not believe it to begin with.

This was but one of many tactics the Koreans used to sway/brainwash American POWs to their cause. To further mentally commit POWs to their pro-Korean/anti-American essays, they would invite them to read their essays out loud in a group (after all, they reasoned with reluctant POWs, if they wrote it, they should not be ashamed to read it out loud). Then, they would have them read their essays on a radio broadcast (after all, they further reasoned, if they read them to a group, they should have no problem reading it on the air).

This led the POWs to gradually come to believe what they were writing and saying.

Allowing anti-Korean/pro-American essays once in a blue moon also gave the essay contests authenticity and credibility (but not so much that the majority of entrants stopped writing pro-Korean/anti-American essays for the contests).

The reason the prizes were so small was so that the POWs would "own" their words. They could not disclaim their actions and reason, "Well, I only did it for the prize," because the prize was worth very little.

This also led to compliant POWs. They swiftly reported against their fellow prisoners when there was an escape plan, for instance (also in exchange for small compensation, like a bag of rice).

It's a little different here, because Miracle Whip's prize is more than modest, but it definitely goes some ways towards implementing Cialdini's law of Commitment and Consistency.

I can easily imagine a relationship breaking up because one insists, "It's the same thing as mayonnaise, but healthier!" and the other insists, "It is NOT the same thing!" (My mother was a Miracle Whip eater; I couldn't stand the stuff, and we had this same argument.)

More condiments confessions: To accommodate a couple vegetarian friends, I recently bought my first jar of Vegannaise -- made with grapeseed oil instead of eggs. Just as bland and fatty as real mayo or MW. So I pureed a can of adobo chiles and mixed it all up... and now my fat has a nice kick to it.

Interesting alternatives to a $25k cash prize. But how about instead of cash, they give away 10 top-of-the-line refrigerators, or offer a kitchen remodel, complete with a "Sandwich Island" (details to follow from some feverish marketer). Please, no Miracle Whip for life.

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